Video-production

My kids are writing and producing a video of an advertisement for their favorite toys. They get very excited about this. It was much easier to get my son to write about his Nerf Blaster and how wonderful it is, than to do some of the other writing exercises in their textbook. Writing comes easier, even when a few drafts are needed. They have learned a lot about what commercials are designed to do, how to stage the actions, write the script and direct the video shots. And, it was done with enthusiasm and increasingly more creativity as we went through several versions. I just had to manage my own feelings of the inevitable chaos (from my perspective) when the toys took over our sessions. I have plans to use video more in the future for science and research projects.

Night Story Telling

One of the best creative projects we have ever taken on was started as a way for my kids to calm down before bed. We tell stories at bedtime. When we started, about two years ago, we told stories about what different animals may do with their day. Anything we wanted to share. No big deal, but a chance for my kids to create stories about animals – because that is what they were interested in. It was cute to hear them, sometimes they repeated themselves over and over, sometimes the animals were irritating, but it was a fun time for us together.

A few months into this routine, I started creating the character of Brownie the Bear, who was a marshmallow-eating bear, lived in the woods and stole marshmallows from all the campers. They absolutely loved this character, and now we have been talking about Brownie and all of his friends in the woods for well over a year. The campers loved Brownie so much that they now leave marshmallows for him and his friends to take and the animals leave presents for the campers in return.

He has had lots of adventures,  developed many friendships, the animal community has regular celebrations, they create art from the marshmallows, play tricks on each other and several animals with special powers go to a school of Hogwart’s for animals. In the autumn, the animals celebrate their harvest season of collecting marshmallows from the campers with a giant bonfire to roast them. They keep the marshmallows deep in caves to keep them fresh for the entire winter. They take the extras, dye them different colors, cut off one slice to get them sticky and stick them to the cave walls to make big beautiful mosaics.

Through this storytelling process, I have been able to take our writing lessons and make them come alive, learning what makes a story compelling. They have found toy animals to play the parts, created props and a stage to act out the scenes.

And, I have also used some of the characters in these stories to re-create some of their real-life events with friends or difficult situations to discuss what the animals would do in similar situations. We discuss how they would feel, what they would do and what their options are.  It is easier to discuss because they can externalize the situations using characters they know well and really care about.

[excerpt from my Minnesota Council for the Gifted and Talented State Conference presentation: Don't Fence Me In - Mastery, Creativity, and Adventure in the Home Education of Bright Children]